3G Technologe

The bid for pan-India spectrum for 3G telephony on Thursday crossed Rs 15,000 crore (Rs 150 billion) and is still rising.

At Rs 15,001 crore (Rs 150.01 billion) bid price for pan-India spectrum, the government is assured of Rs 60,571 crore (Rs 605.71 billion) revenues as against budgeted estimates of Rs 35,000 crore (Rs 350 billion) from sale of air waves for 3G and Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) put together.

Thursday was the 29th day of auction and sources in the Department of Telecom said that auction may go on for some more days.

The base price for a national 3G licence was fixed at a low Rs 3,500 crore (Rs 35 billion). The BWA spectrum auction will start only after completion of 3G auction.

Nine leading mobile operators, including Bharti Airtel [ Get Quote ], Vodafone, RCOM, Tatas, are up against each other to grab spectrum. The government selling three blocks of spectrum in most of states with four slots in five states of Punjab [ Images ], Bihar, Orissa, Jammu and Kashmir [ Images ] and Himachal Pradesh [ Images ].

The bid price for Mumbai [ Images ] and Delhi [ Images ] is close to other over Rs 2,700 crore (Rs 27 billion) as against the reserve prices of Rs 320 crore (Rs 3.20 billion) for each circle.

Telecom Minister A Raja [ Images ] had recently expressed confidence that the government might garner up to Rs 55,000 crore (Rs 550 billion) from the 3G and BWA spectrum auctions.

After the auction for 3G is closed, the government would start the auction for BWA for which as many as 11 operators are in the fray. The reserve price for BWA spectrum has been fixed at Rs 1,750 crore (Rs 17.50 billion) and only two slot of 20 MHz each are on the block.

3G telephony allows subscribers to download hi-speed data and stream videos on mobile phones. The radio waves are being auctioned across 22 circles and the bidding would be closed once the price is discovered in all the service areas simultaneously.